


Summer Nights

by psyduckappears



Category: Julie and The Phantoms (TV)
Genre: 1990s, Bobby is only mentioned, Consensual Underage Sex, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Georgia for some reason, Getting Together, Growing Up Together, Humor, Light Angst, M/M, Mostly Fluff, Mutual Pining, Peterpatter, Reggie's grandparents, Reggie's parents should burn in hell, Slow Burn, Some angst, Summer Vacation, Teenagers, bruises and scars, idiots to lovers, mentions of parental abuse, not explicit though, ruke - Freeform, they're sixteen at that point, whatever
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-15
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-17 15:22:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29473914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/psyduckappears/pseuds/psyduckappears
Summary: Every year since they were thirteen, Reggie and Luke have been going to visit Reggie's grandparents in Georgia for the summer. The world is a little different there, and every time they go it becomes clearer that they're a little different there, too.Rated T because of some non-descriptive sex later on... there's also some swearing. I don't really know if that's an accurate rating, so if you think it should be M instead or sth, hit me up!
Relationships: Alex Mercer & Luke Patterson & Reggie Peters (Julie and The Phantoms), Alex Mercer & Luke Patterson (Julie and The Phantoms), Alex Mercer & Reggie Peters (Julie and The Phantoms), Luke Patterson/Reggie Peters (Julie and The Phantoms)
Comments: 67
Kudos: 160





	1. Summer 1991

**Author's Note:**

> Hey! My first multi-chapter thing in.... a while, but it's only going to be five (granted I can count) and they're mostly finished, so don't worry toooo much about me actually finishing this. Do enjoy! Comments and kudos as always very welcome.

“My parents are sending me to Georgia for the summer,” thirteen-year-old Reggie Peters tells his best friend on the last day of school. Luke has been talking about his plans for the summer all week, listing all the _awesome_ things the two of them would do together, and Reggie has been trying to come up with a good way to tell him all the while. He doesn’t want to see the disappointed look on Luke’s face, but he feels like he deserves it after keeping this from him for so long. When he looks up at his face, though, Luke mainly looks confused.

“What? Why?”

“To stay with my grandparents. They say they miss me, but I’m pretty sure my parents just want their peace and quiet for two months.”

“So you’re gone the whole summer?” Now, he does look disappointed. Reggie winces a little. He knows it isn’t his fault, and Luke will have a completely acceptable summer with or without him, but he still feels guilty for leaving him.

“Yeah… sorry, I know you had a lot planned and stuff.”

Thankfully, Luke gives him a smile and bumps their shoulders together as they make their way out of the school building. “Don’t sweat it,” he says. “It’s not like you asked for it.”

Reggie did _not_ ask for it. He loves his grandparents, even if he only sees them once a year, when they come to L.A. for Christmas, but he decidedly did not sign up for two months spent somewhere in the middle of nowhere, Georgia. He returns Luke’s smile and feels glad that at least he doesn’t hold it against him.

The next day, Luke meets him at their usual hang-out spot at the beach with a bright grin and a skip to his step. At first, Reggie doesn’t question the upbeat attitude because the Luke he knows is nothing if not energetic, and he would be more confused if he weren’t now, especially on the first day of summer break. When he unceremoniously picks Reggie up (like the lightweight that he is), despite his spluttering protest, and carries him down into the water to drop them both in, Reggie does feel a little taken off guard.

“What the hell?” he asks, face red and hair glued to his forehead, when he comes back up to the surface. Luke looks similar, his clothes sticking to his skin and his messy head of hair darkened by the water. The grin is still in place, and it’s hard not to return.

“I have an idea,” Luke says, bobbing up and down in the water like a buoy on a particularly windy day, even though both of them can almost comfortably stand on the ground. Reggie swims a little further out, backwards, which is a little awkward but works all the same, until he’s treading to stay in place.

“I think you’ve had enough ideas for a day,” Reggie mutters. It brings forth a delighted laugh from Luke, who grabs Reggie’s shoulders and dips him again, nothing he can do about it. He gives Luke a glare and flicks some water at him.

“You’ll like this one, though!” Luke grins. When Reggie only raises his eyebrows like he doubts it, he continues. “You know how you’re leaving on Tuesday, right?”

“Really? I completely forgot.”

“Shut up. So, I was thinking – what if I came with you?” He’s smiling at Reggie expectantly, waiting for him to say something. Reggie, true to his nature, is a little speechless. It’s entirely possible that his mouth is even hanging open a little.

“What?”

“What if I came with you to Georgia? We could spend the summer together and do most of the stuff we were going to, and you don’t have to die of boredom in some country ass small town full of old people. I asked my parents, they’re okay with it. If your grandparents are, obviously.”

“I – uh – “ Reggie says, intelligently. He never even _thought_ of bringing someone to Georgia. It hasn’t occurred to him that it might be an option, let alone that Luke would even want that. So, you know. _Give him a break._ Luke, always too quick to everything, is already losing his smile.

“Except you don’t want me to come,” he quickly interjects, eyes growing wide. “That’s totally fine, I didn’t want to –“

“No! That’s… That’s actually a really good idea.”

The grin comes back, full force, and Luke all but jumps him for an ill-advised hug that almost has them both go under. “You don’t need to sound so surprised about it.”

It’s Thursday afternoon by the time they arrive in Atlanta, where Reggie’s grandpa Sam is waiting for them with the car to take them home. They’re stiff, and exhausted, and sick of sitting from two days on the coach, but the car ride is another two hours, and they spend it fidgeting and poking at each other in the backseat while Sam puts on a rock station and taps along to the rhythm on the steering wheel. Frankie, Reggie’s grandma, is waiting for them with an early dinner and a tight hug for each of them. Reggie tries to be embarrassed, but she tells him to quit the teenage crap, and he and Luke are both too busy being shocked by her language to complain about the affection. It’s nice, even if he wouldn’t admit it. They go to bed early, wrecked from their trip, and wake up with the sun for once in their lives.

The first few days are spent getting used to being there. Reggie has never been to visit his grandparents, at least not since he was too young to remember, and Luke has met Reggie’s grandparents a total of two times in his life. It’s a bit weird at first, being around them so much, and being around each other so much. They’ve spent the night with each other before, sure, but they’ve never lived together, especially not for two months. Reggie loves it, having Luke around all day. Reggie is generally having a great time, actually, and with every day passing, some of the initial awkward tension passes.

On Sunday, they go to church, and it’s nothing like the services Reggie’s parents have dragged him to. The sermon is just as tiring as always, maybe even a little worse seeing the priest is _ancient_ , but it’s so much more… familial. There’s thirty people attending the service, at most, and everyone seems to know each other and their brother. His grandmother proudly introduces him and Luke to all of her friends like she couldn’t be happier that they’re finally meeting, and Reggie hasn’t felt so welcome among adults in a very long time.

After, when they’re back home, she assigns the two the task of making the apple crumble for the afternoon while she gets started on lunch. It’s not a good idea, it turns out, to let two thirteen-year-olds make pie without extensive supervision, but she looks at the egg yolk spread over the counter and the messy attempt at sugar crumbles in good humour and teaches them properly while her casserole is in the oven.

This is how the weeks pass. They spend the days exploring the area, finding a small lake not too far away where youths from all over the neighbouring villages and even the next larger town come for a swim. It’s different than the ocean, but it’s not any less great, and they find themselves passing a lot of hot afternoons there, making contests out of who can stay under water for longer (Reggie), who can dive the deepest (also Reggie), and who can swim the fastest (definitely Luke). Their skin turns brown quickly, though Reggie has to go through red first, then pass pale and freckled before he can reach a certain tan. It’s okay. Sam brings AfterBurn from town, and Luke helps him to carefully apply it on his back, where his skin is this close to blistering.

When they’re not at the lake or in the backyard, they help Reggie’s grandparents around the house, let them teach them card games and take them to the woods to collect mushrooms and berries and whatever else they can find and identify as edible. It’s only then that Reggie realises that he’s never really left Los Angeles, with its busy streets and masses of tourists and artificial parks. He loves the city, but everything is so much calmer here, so much quieter. He feels how it makes _him_ calmer, too, and he thinks that maybe Luke feels the same way.

Because Luke, well. Luke is a whole new person, here. He’s still happy, upbeat, full of life, but he’s also attentive and suddenly capable of sitting still, something which Reggie previously thought to be impossible. Halfway into their fourth week there, they get something from the attic for Frankie, and while they’re looking, Luke finds an old western guitar in a dusty case. They take it downstairs with the box they went up there for in the first place, and Sam pauses the soccer match he recorded the other day to tune it and show them some songs. He plays them Chuck Berry and some early Led Zeppelin, and even though he’s definitely rusty, Luke stares at him open-mouthed like he’s never seen anything more impressive in his life.

“Can you show me?” he asks after a few songs, and when Sam complies with an amused smile, he’s more focussed than Reggie has ever seen him before. He watches for an hour as his grandfather shows Luke some basic chords and strumming patterns, and Luke picks it up quickly like Reggie feels like he never does with anything. It’s mesmerizing to watch, that little concentrated frown between his brows and the determination with which he repeats the same progressions until he can switch between the chords flawlessly before moving on to the next. If anyone ever looks at Reggie as intensely as Luke does at the strings, he thinks, he’ll be either very lucky or very dead.

He swallows and goes to sit with his grandma in the garden, and she tells him about the country music on her little radio. It’s not what he usually listens to, but it’s nice, and it feels like everything about this trip. Like home.

That night, Luke and Reggie find themselves sitting on the front porch. Out here, far away from any notable amount of light pollution, they can see a billion stars. Not just the particularly bright ones – it’s like every time he looks away and back up again, more have joined the others. There are so many of them that he feels like it should be bright as day, although he knows how it works with the distance and all. He’s seen _Star Wars_ , after all. Some _Star Trek,_ too, thanks to bored weekends on spring break. Still. Stars are crazy.

“Stars are _crazy_ ,” he says into the quiet. Luke still has the guitar in his lap, but he hasn’t been picking at it in at least half an hour, granting his burning fingertips a little rest.

“Why?”

“I don’t know. There’s so many of them. I mean, I knew there were so many of them, but now that I really see so many of them for the first time… Plus, did you know, that some of them might already be dead? Or extinguished, or whatever it’s called for stars? But because they’re so far away, the information hasn’t come through, so we still see them. I can’t really explain it. It’s kind of sad.”

“No, it isn’t,” Luke says, gently lying down the guitar on the ground next to him. “It’s like… they died, but we’re still remembering them. Like John Lennon, or something. They’re dead, but at least they’re not forgotten.”

Reggie shrugs. “Yeah, but at least we _know_ John Lennon is dead.”

Luke laughs, bumping their knees together. “True. But still, I think it’s nice. I want to be remembered when I die. Just think about – when a star stops shining, who’ll still remember it ever existed? There’s so many of them. Once it stops shining, it’s kind of… insignificant.”

“Okay, you’re right, I wasn’t being depressing. _You’re_ being depressing,” Reggie huffs, picks up the guitar, and starts playing with it. Sam told Luke he should keep it and take it home. Luke, well-raised as he is, insisted he _couldn’t_ , but Sam wouldn’t budge, and he has a spare, somewhere, anyway. Reggie has no idea how to play, but with how happy Luke looks when he does, maybe he should pick up an instrument too, when they get home. He experimentally plucks at some strings, presses some down with the other hand like he saw Luke do, and it doesn’t sound like a melody, but it doesn’t sound awful, so he keeps going.

“Whatever,” Luke says, eye-roll audible in his voice, but when Reggie looks over at him, he’s smiling. Reggie, unable to do anything else, smiles back. With Luke, he could probably sit here and stare at the sky forever.


	2. Summer 1992

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter 2 for you because I was productive for uni so you're getting rewarded. that's how it works, now, yes. hope you enjoy! let me know what you think :D chapter 3 will be another short one, probably, but the last two are a little longer (not... extremely long, though)

The next year, Reggie knows why his parents want him out of the house, and unlike the year before, he’s thrilled to go. He’s had a year of increasing tensions, and his less than mediocre grades haven’t been making it better. The only outlets he has are Luke and his bass guitar, which he picked as his instrument of choice after some thorough research and a heated debate about who’s the best Beatle (even though neither of them even listens to the Beatles that much, but that’s technicalities). He sometimes stays behind in school or spends lunch in the music room to try out other instruments, and he’s easily picked up the banjo and some guitar, as well as some basic piano after listening to Billy Joel’s album _The Stranger_ on repeat for a week and deciding he needed to be more like Billy Joel.

It turns out that as much as he struggles with rhyme schemes and numbers and the chronology of some war that happened four hundred years ago, he has an extraordinarily easy time learning new instruments. He mostly sticks to his bass, though. It’s the most valuable thing he owns, both in price and sentiment. Luke helped him pick it out; it’s red, and gorgeous, and he convinced his father to buy it for him after he forgot to take him to the orthodontist for the fourth time. _If I’m going to have crooked teeth all my life, I have to find some other way to be cool, don’t I_? he’d joked. His father had laughed uncomfortably and promised he’d call to reschedule in the morning, but he’d gotten him the bass, nonetheless.

He doesn’t take the bass to Georgia, but Luke takes his guitar like he takes it everywhere he goes. (He didn’t even have to ask Luke if he wanted to come – they have been talking about it for a year, after all.) Although Reggie is quite alright on the guitar, Luke has spent most of the past year practicing, taking classes, and learning, and getting better with every day, and it shows. He’s _incredible_ , if you ask Reggie, and he sings well, too. He’d never heard Luke sing before he got the guitar, but the longer he played, the less shy he got about it until he dropped all inhibitions. Reggie suspects that it had something to do with being too _cool_ and _manly_ to sing, but once he pointed out to Luke that some of the coolest men they know are singers (see Bowie, see Mercury, though recently deceased and also socially _murdered_ by the media, fuck them, see Cobain, see –), Luke began letting him listen. God, Luke’s voice makes him want to scream, it’s so nice. Sometimes he’ll just let Luke play and sing all afternoon while he lies there and listens, and it’s the only times these days that Reggie feels really grounded. It’s like they’re right back in Georgia, every time. Back in the calm. He stops buzzing. The storm inside him settles. (He thinks, sometimes, that maybe he should see a doctor with how he’s been feeling for the past few years. The unrest, the fleetingness of his concentration, his learning issues – his teachers think he’s lazy or stupid, and maybe he’s stupid but he’s surely _not_ lazy, goddammit, he _tries._ Maybe he should just stop trying so hard…) He digresses.

Luke takes the guitar to Georgia, and it’s always somewhere in the way throughout the entire bus ride. Reggie thinks these two days are probably the longest Luke has gone without playing it since he got it, but they distract each other in other ways. They talk, they play cards, they sleep, Luke rested against the window and Reggie against Luke. Luke’s mom packed them snacks en masse, suspecting that Reggie’s parents would probably not think of it. He hasn’t _told_ her about how it’s been at home, but Emily’s perceptive, and it’s hard to explain the sixth time saying _no, I won’t come over after school tomorrow. I’m getting my braces._ He did eventually get those braces, even though he kind of hates it. Annie from math class called him ‘brace face’ his first day after getting them, and he’s gotten stuck with them in his clothes on several occasions. Luke keeps saying he looks fine, but he’s biased, so it doesn’t count. It still makes him feel a little better, somehow. Luke’s weird like that. Anyway, Emily has some kind of idea that something isn’t right, and if it weren’t so obvious, Luke probably would have let something slip, anyway. He’s always been close with his mom, even if he’s (once again) too ‘cool’ to admit it.

Frankie picks them up this time, and even though they’re dead on their feet, they spend the rest of the afternoon sightseeing in Atlanta and eating ice cream before driving back to the house. Since Luke is outnumbered two to one, they spend the ride listening to country, and Reggie promises his grandma to show her the handful of country songs he’s learned to play on guitar later.

That summer is different than the previous one. Coming there feels like coming home, this time, and they dive right into afternoons picking fruit in the garden, swimming in the lake, making trips into town, and searching through the clutter Reggie’s grandparents have all over their house. It’s become a _thing_ , at this point, that they will sit out on the porch after dark almost every night. Sam joins them, sometimes, bringing a jug of iced tea with him. They talk, or they go around playing songs on Luke’s guitar, or they just stare out into the open. After last year, Sam apparently stuck to his word and dug out his spare guitar, getting back into playing. Other nights, it’s just the two of them, sides pressed together as they laugh about the silliest things until their sides hurt.

One weekend in August, a carnival is in the next town over, and Frankie gives them a ride before meeting a friend for tea. The day is hot, but Reggie has thankfully passed the sunburn stage of the summer and is completely capable of enjoying it, especially because they brought an extra big bottle of water on his grandmother’s insistence.

“What do you wanna do?” he asks when the car disappears down the street and they enter the carnival grounds. Everything is colourful, and bright, and full of people, even though the whole thing is significantly smaller than any carnival Reggie has been to before.

“Let’s check out what they got and then decide what we’re gonna do first!” Luke says, and it’s such a solid logic that Reggie thinks it’s just typical that _he_ didn’t didn’t think of it. He grins and nods, and Luke grabs his hand and pulls him down to the left.

Luke’s plan works for about five minutes before they get too excited and start doing things instead of just looking. There’s one of those balloon games where you win a price when someone finds your balloon and sends the postcard back to the return address, and Reggie and Luke each get one and proceed to fight by hitting the floating balloons over their heads and making them bump against the other. They laugh at each other’s statically charged hair and how it makes them look like they’re from outer space until Reggie finds a stand that sells cotton candy and _needs_ to have some, even though they just had lunch before they left.

“It’s mostly sugar and air, it’s not like it’s _filling,_ ” he argues when Luke questions his eating habits. Luke looks a little disillusioned at the description, even though he must have known that to be true. “Plus, it’s been at least an hour. I could eat. Let’s have hotdogs, later!”

“Jesus, Reg,” Luke laughs, stealing a piece of candy. “It’s like you think of nothing but food all day, man.”

Reggie shrugs and holds out the stick to offer him more. “What can I say? I’m growing. It will happen to you, too, when you’re older.”

For that, Luke shoves him and gives him a half-hearted glare. The shove is enough to make his stumble, but the glare is so pouty that Reggie can’t help a bark of laughter. “You’re only a month older than me.”

“And like half a foot taller,” he grins.

“Shut up.”

Later, Luke wins him a giraffe, saying that’s what he looks like because he’s so lanky and stupid. Reggie names it David and declares it his new best friend because his old one can’t take a joke. Every time he looks down at David, a stupid grin stretches his lips.

The last week of their stay comes too quickly, and suddenly Reggie remembers that there’s a real life in Los Angeles he has to return to, with school and fighting parents, and girls calling him metal mouth and a whole bunch of classes he doesn’t understand. They’re starting high school in a year, and he can barely pass his tests now. It’s an understatement to say he’s panicking when Luke finds him in the backyard on Tuesday afternoon.

He is a bit startled, to say the least, to find Reggie crying for no apparent reason. Luke isn’t good with tears (what teenage boy is, really?), but to his credit, he does sit with Reggie and awkwardly puts a hand on his shoulder.

“Hey, uh. What’s wrong?”

Reggie is flushed with embarrassment and hot from crying, and he just shakes his head and keeps his face hidden in his hands. It gives Luke a little more courage, somehow, because he scoots closer where they’re sitting on the ground and tentatively puts an arm around Reggie. When Luke feels like this, his mom always hugs him, even if he complains because he’s _too old_ for that kind of thing. Reggie’s mom probably doesn’t hug him very much, these days. Maybe he should have gotten Frankie. She gives great hugs. (But Frankie isn’t home, and this can’t wait another couple of hours until she is, so Luke gets it together and does it himself, hoping that he’s doing something right. It isn’t like they’ve never hugged before. Usually, neither of them is crying, though, and if he thinks about it, it _has_ been a while.)

“Come on, Reg, you know I won’t laugh at you or something.” He doesn’t know if Reggie knows that, but he hopes so, and in any case – Reggie is obviously upset, why would he laugh at him? He feels like Reggie might think that, though, with the pink tint of his ears, and he distinctly remembers a couple of occasions where someone in school has laughed at one of the boys for crying. The kids in their class kind of suck.

“It’s stupid,” Reggie mumbles.

“I’m sure it isn’t half as stupid as you think it is,” Luke says. Reggie sighs, lifts his head, and dries his eyes.

“It’s just… everything back home. With my parents. And I suck at school, and I – what if I can’t go to high school next year?”

“Why wouldn’t you?”

Reggie rolls his eyes at him. “ _Because_ I suck at math, and I know nothing about poetry, and I’m shit at remembering stuff, and I absolutely do not get science no matter how long I stare at my stupid textbook. Maybe I’m just too dumb for high school.”

“Hey, no,” Luke protests, pulling him closer until Reggie slumps sideways against his shoulder. It should feel a bit weird with their height difference, but Reggie is cowered together so much that it’s barely like he’s any taller than Luke. He cards his fingers through Reggie’s hair, gently, and internally stops cursing the height advantage in favour of wishing Reggie didn’t look so small right now. “You’re not dumb. You’ve learned how to play like five instruments in a year. You’re basically a genius.”

“Playing the banjo isn’t going to get me through any exams, though,” Reggie huffs.

“We can study together. I’m not the best at school, but I’m sure we can figure out some way to get that stuff inside your head if the way the teachers do it isn’t doing it for you. I’m not going to high school without my best friend.”

“You really think that will work?” Reggie asks, slowly pulling back from Luke’s hug. Luke takes it as a cue to get up and extend a hand. They still have a week here, and they might as well enjoy it as long as they can.

“Definitely. You won’t know your report card when the year is over.”

Reggie takes his hand and lets himself be pulled up to his feet. He’s still bright red in the face, but his smile is back where it belongs. “You called me your best friend,” he points out as they make their way inside.

“Well, _duh_ ,” Luke laughs, bumping their shoulders together like he always does, but his neck is looking red, and Reggie is pretty sure it isn’t sunburn. It makes sense. They’re not the most expressive with their emotions, on a regular day.

“You’ll have to fight David for that title,” Reggie jokes. “I think he’s gotten pretty comfortable with his new position.” 


	3. Summer 1993

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> soo, year three is here :D not much has changed, except they're finished with middle school, and they've met alex, and ... well, actually a lot has changed. and then they're in Georgia, and well... you'll see
> 
> note Reggie becoming more and more rambling and them still being stupid teens
> 
> sorry this took a couple of days, I legitimately have no excuse except I kept forgetting to update! Kudos and comments as always very welcome, and thanks for those who left all those sweet comments so far :D

It takes an hour of reassuring Alex that he can always call when he needs someone to get him down from his panic. It might be their fault for never mentioning the fact that they’ll be gone for the whole summer, and now that they’ve told him, Reggie feels a little bad that they didn’t even think to invite him along. It’s not that they don’t want Alex there – he’s become part of them so easily from the day Reggie met him after church. (His mother still goes, and sometimes Reggie feels overwhelmed with a need to come along in hopes that it will feel as nice as it does with his grandparents someday, but it never does. At least, though, they got Alex out of it. Alex is awesome, even if he makes mean jokes about Reggie all the time. Unlike with their classmates, Reggie knows he doesn’t mean it.) Alex fits right in with the two, and most days, it feels like he’s always been there, even if he doesn’t go to school with them, yet. They’re headed to the same high school, though, so that’s okay, and Alex is always open to helping either of them with their homework if necessary. He’s a treasure, really. As much as Luke tried to help, Reggie can’t imagine how he would have made it through the last year without him. The point is, he loves Alex like a brother, but Georgia… it just feels like a him-and-Luke thing. It isn’t that he doesn’t want Alex there, as he said, but he just never considered the possibility of bringing Alex along. He doesn’t consider the possibility of a lot of things, it seems.

That isn’t why Alex is freaking out, though. He’s not mad that they didn’t ask him, at least Reggie doesn’t think he is ( _but what does that have to say,_ a bitter part of him thinks _, you never seem to catch on to what goes on in other people’s heads as you should_ ), he’s just worried about them being gone for so long.

“What am I gonna do? I can’t hang around the house all summer! What if my parents _find out_?”

“They won’t find out,” Luke says, soothingly rubbing a hand between Alex’ shoulder blades. They’re still not good with these things, but Alex has helped them get at least a _little_ in touch with their emotions. Or rather, he’s forced them to because otherwise, Reggie doesn’t know how they would have gotten him through all the outbursts of anxiety Alex has been getting more and more frequently in the past few months. It got a little better a week or two after coming out to the two of them one evening, once they had managed to convince him they didn’t _secretly_ hate him and were just waiting until he felt secure to attack, but then it went right back downhill when a kid at school wrote a slur all over his locker just because he was wearing a pink sweater. Since then, he’s been a little… paranoid about people figuring it out and committing hate-crimes against him.

“Maybe I can ask my grandparents if you can tag along this year,” Reggie offers when Alex’ breathing is relatively even, and they all lay back down in the sand. “I’m sure they wouldn’t mind. Old people love you.”

“No, don’t bother,” Alex says, but not unkindly. “My parents wouldn’t let me drive halfway through the country by myself, anyway.”

“But you wouldn’t be alone,” Reggie smiles up at him. Luke still hasn’t quite caught up height-wise, but Alex is taller than both of them. “’Cause we always have each other!”

Alex groans and flicks his face without even turning to look over at him.

“That was cheesy as hell, bro,” Luke snickers from Alex’ other side. Reggie just sticks his tongue out at him and puts it back in his mouth just in time before Luke throws a handful of sand right into his face.

Alex does call, at least once a week, and he seems to get more relaxed each time. Reggie has a feeling he also hangs out at home less every week, and that the two might coincide, and it’s confirmed when Alex tells them he met this guy at the beach (the mere fact that Alex _approached_ him is bordering on miraculous) who’s really cute but also really straight, and who plays guitar, and _he would be perfect for the band, guys. He’s really cool, too._ The band is still a fresh thing in their lives, unnamed and with little direction, but it’s fun and Reggie really hopes they’ll keep doing it for a while. Playing bass by himself in his room is not half as cool as playing with Alex on the drums and Luke on guitar, with his awesome vocals and that intoxicating energy he exudes when he plays.

“You only say that ‘cause you have the hots for him,” Reggie teases, making Luke laugh beside him.

“No, I don’t. I say that because he listens to Green Day, and he isn’t one of those pretentious idiots you usually meet at music stores. And he’s actually really good, he showed me.”

“Oh, he _showed_ you, huh?” Luke asks, making Alex huff in frustration.

“I hate you two idiots. Stay in Georgia for the rest of the year, for all I care.”

“ _Noo_ , Alex, we love you,” Reggie laughs. “Come on, okay, seriously though. Dude sounds great, he should come play with us sometime when we’re back. Right, Luke?”

“Yeah, definitely.”

“… Okay. I’ll ask him, then. I gotta go, now, my mom wants something.”

“Bye!”

“Yeah, bye,” Luke says, before adding. “Don’t have too much fun with the new guy without us.”

Alex sighs and hangs up without another word.

“He loves us.”

“Absolutely.”  
  


The summer passes like it always does, with warm days spent all over the place and mild nights out on the front porch or in the backyard. The house is filled with music, as seems to always be the case, and spending time with Reggie’s grandparents becomes less and less a pleasant side-effect of these trips and more and more a big addition to the endless ‘pros’ of it all. They’re sweet, and easy-going, and hilarious, and it’s much easier to believe they’re real people than it is with most adults. Sam teaches them how to fix things around the house every time something needs fixing, and Frankie shows them ‘how to take care of your ladies because I’ll be damned if my boys can’t cook a girl dinner’. He laughs about it, but secretly he likes imagining himself cooking nice meals for some hypothetical future girlfriend. In any case, they feel more like parents than Reggie’s have in a while, and he feels like he can finally go to bed breathing easily again. Luke has wonderful, loving parents, of course, and he knows that, but Reggie guesses the grass is always greener on the other side. It’s good to get away.

They’re fifteen, so Frankie doesn’t bother staying up to send them to bed anymore, and one night, they stay up until the sun comes back up over the roofs of the neighbourhood. Reggie has his head in Luke’s lap, and Luke a hand in his hair, and they talk about everything and nothing the entire night until Reggie’s arms get cold just from watching Luke in his sleeveless shirt. Luke started working out earlier that year, and now he feels the need to show it off with those shirts just because he can. Reggie doesn’t mind too much, somehow, even though he’s a bit jealous he can’t pull that off himself. (It’s his own fault for never joining Luke when he works out, to be fair. Still. The girls at school have been _all_ over Luke lately, and it probably won’t be any different in high school.) He thoughtlessly runs his fingers along the exposed skin because it _should_ be cold with how the temperature dropped in the past two hours, but it’s warm as ever. Still, Luke shivers under his touch.

“Dude, your hands are like _ice_.”

“You say that like I’m the weird one, here. It’s cold. _You_ shouldn’t be warm.”

“I can get the blanket from the box by the door,” Luke offers, but Reggie shakes his head.

“Nah, I’m fine,” he smiles and averts his eyes to watch the sunrise.

(The summer _would_ pass like it always does, if it weren’t for that one afternoon.) It’s too hot to go outside, has been for days, and they’re stuck inside playing music, watching tv, baking. Sam left sometime after lunch to do god-knows-what, despite the heat, and so after they’ve helped clean up the kitchen, Reggie convinces Frankie to dig out her old record collection. She mentioned it a while ago, boxes upon boxes of vinyl in worn paper sleeves, lined up neatly but collecting dust, stacked in corners and otherwise unused shelves and cupboards. She lets them get some of them up from the basement, and then she dusts one of and puts it on, and she declares it a dance party. Luke has been dragged into a few of those by his mother, before, insisting he needs to know how to dance so future girlfriends won’t have to choose between dancing and unharmed feet ( _I wish your grandmother had done the same for your father, Luke, he barely managed ten minutes on the dancefloor at our wedding)_ , but Reggie has no idea how to dance, generally or rock’n’roll in particular. So, his grandma instructs him until he stops stepping on _her_ feet, and she starts to breathe a little heavily and needs to sit. Luke is there to take over in an instant, and they jump through the steps for a couple of songs, grinning and singing along to the choruses, until a slower song comes on, the singer’s voice sweet as honey, and Reggie is once again at a loss. His helpless face doesn’t last for long (though long enough for Luke to laugh at him a little) because Luke promptly pulls him in closer with a grin, saying something about learning by doing.

“Just kinda … sway from one foot to the other. Don’t overthink it,” Luke explains when Reggie stumbles a little trying to follow his steps. Then, in a teasing tone, he adds, “Jesus. I know why we’ve been avoiding dances all those years.”

“Hey, I -” Reggie whines, finally looking up from their feet to glare at Luke. Luke, who’s suddenly _much_ closer than Reggie realised. He kind of forgets what he was going to say, so he just swallows, says nothing, and tries not to let the surprise show on his face too obviously. When he doesn’t continue, Luke raises his eyebrow and gives him a smug grin before twirling Reggie around without warning and pulling him back in so abruptly that he bumps into his chest. If Reggie wasn’t so busy spluttering, he would notice that his grandmother is nowhere to be seen.

“Smooth, man,” Luke laughs. Reggie, probably red as a tomato, glares at him yet again but lets him drag him back into a proper dance. He leads well, as far as Reggie can judge. Something warm settles in his chest as he watches Luke, and the colour doesn’t vanish from his face until a long time later. Something is different, but he doesn’t want to think too much about what it is.

He just knows that suddenly, it’s a lot harder and a lot nicer to be so close to Luke, and that maybe, that didn’t happen quite as suddenly as he’s telling himself.

He doesn’t pay it any mind, after that. Frankie comes back into the room after a few minutes with something to drink, and the dancing makes room for _Saved By The Bell_ and dinner preparations. The last two weeks of their stay pass like nothing changed, but Reggie knows something did, deep down. Some moments, he can feel it again, the same tingly feeling in his stomach, or a burn in a spot where Luke’s hand lingers for a while, or his inability to _not_ return Luke’s smile or to say no to anything he asks. Sometimes he thinks back to the giraffe plushie under his pillow back home, hidden so his father won’t find out he still keeps a toy in his bed, and the way it helps him fall asleep when his head gets too loud at night. Sometimes they sit on the couch, a flowery, seventies design, or in the grass by the lake, and Reggie spends a little too long studying the line of his nose, or the curve of his neck, or the red of his lip that he bites raw when he’s thinking. Sometimes he lies awake in the bed they share and just listens to Luke breathe.

If he’s _really_ learned one thing in the past year, though, it’s how to hide what’s going on in his head. He’s an open book when he’s not paying attention, but if he has something to hide, he’ll hide it. For instance, he doesn’t remember the last time his parents spoke to each other in a normal volume. Nobody knows about it. Nobody has noticed anything is worse than usual. Nobody saw the bruise on his arm in March because nobody asked – because nobody _suspected._ Luke didn’t need to know that, and he definitely doesn’t need to know how weird Reggie feels around him, sometimes, and so he just won’t know.

It’s really that easy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *narrator voice*: it's not that easy


	4. Summer 1994

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sooo second to last chapter, huh? sorry this took a few days again, but you know how it is... thanks for all the sweet comments I've received so far, and thanks to everyone bearing with me on this story! As always, all your thoughts are appreciated in the comment section :D

Reggie is … panicking. He has been begging Alex to come along to Georgia, but ever since he came out to his parents, they’ve had an iron grip on him. They want him to go to bible camp during the break, and all of them have their suspicions that maybe it isn’t really bible camp they’re sending him to. Another reason Reggie wants him to come with, aside from the primary reason, which is his having gone and completely, ridiculously fallen in love with Luke. Yes, that’s right. At some point in the past ten or so months, his little crush from last summer evolved into full-blown adoration, which was just _too_ easy, anyway, with someone like Luke. Stupid Luke with his bright eyes and his wide smiles, with his stupid sleeveless shirts and his increasingly gravelly singing voice, with his determination and his drive and his body heat. Luke, who writes all these amazing songs and encourages them to practice and get better every day, and who found them a rehearsing space by talking that old lady into lending them her garage. Luke, who gives him a hug every fucking time he runs from home in the middle of the night because he can’t sleep through the screaming anymore without waking up shaking and sweating, and who lets him stay with him in his bed even though it’s much too small for two people.

Reggie went to Alex’ house a few times instead of Luke’s since he realised his feelings with some unwarranted surprise, but he knows that if Alex’ parents find him there in the morning, they’ll murder both of them, so he avoids it. He mostly goes to the studio, now, although his heart usually tries to bully him in Luke’s direction. Luke is comfort. The studio is more home than his parents’ house, but without the others, it lacks a heartbeat. It’s lonely.

It’s the day before they leave, and he’s at the beach with Alex. Bobby was with them earlier, but he went off to get something to drink and hasn’t returned in half an hour, so Reggie assumes he’s bothering some poor girls with his bad pick-up lines. Not that Reggie’s pick-up lines are any better – he just doesn’t deliver them like he thinks they might work. Bobby is great, and all, but he really needs to work on that. Then again, who is Reggie out of all people to give anyone relationship advice?

“I can’t do it, Lex,” he says. “I can’t spend two whole months alone with him. You don’t know how it is, these summers, it’s so… different. _We’re_ so different, there.”

“How?” Alex asks, popping a piece of gum in his mouth before offering one to Reggie. It’s watermelon. He shakes his head.

“I don’t know. It’s like another world. He’s quieter, more serious. Me, too. We’re closer, somehow.”

Alex snorts. “How is that even possible?” he asks as if at this point, he isn’t just as much part of a dangerously co-dependent friend group as Luke and Reggie are. Bobby is the only one out of them with a fully functioning home life, after all, so the three of them have been spending afternoon upon afternoon glued together, closer than any of them have ever been to another person. Even before their families started dragging them downhill with them.

“Believe me, it is.”

“Well, then…”

“Yeah?” Reggie asks. Maybe Alex has some actual advice for him. He’s glad he’s told Alex about himself. Not just did he help him figure himself out, being much more knowledgeable about the whole sexuality thing (David Bowie was enough justification to make Reggie believe there was nothing wrong with him for liking boys and girls both, but he definitely had been in need of some guidance), but it also helps to talk about Luke. It doesn’t help to _gush_ about Luke, but sometimes, they do it anyway. Alex doesn’t have feelings for Luke (though he does admit to a little crush when they first met), but he can appreciate a sight, as he put it so elegantly.

“Then you’re fucked,” Alex concludes, and Reggie lets himself fall back with a whine.

“I really am, huh?”

The bus ride is intense, but only for Reggie. Luke acts as he always does, bubbly, and happy, and awfully physically affectionate. The latter has been getting more in the past half year or so, as if he is trying to torment Reggie. They’re crammed together in their adjoined seats for a little over two days, and Reggie is hyperaware of every last touch because his mind is running amok at the idea of spending two months in close proximity without giving himself away.

Reggie didn’t tell Luke, but his parents didn’t tell him to go, this year. They didn’t even remember summer break was coming up until he very carefully asked his mother for some bus money. He doesn’t know why he didn’t say anything – maybe it would have even gotten him out of this trip to hell. (He does know why he didn’t say anything – he didn’t _want_ to get out of this trip to hell. He’s a masochist.) Anyway, they’re here, now, and somehow, he survives the ride without too much damage. It’s good for Luke, too, he knows. Things have been tense with his parents, lately, and he’s been constantly looking for ways to get out of the house. Maybe some distance will do him good, and then all the torture this will bring upon Reggie will have been worth it. At least, that’s what he tells himself when Luke falls asleep with his head on Reggie’s shoulder, and the butterflies in his stomach go rampant.

He tries to avoid getting to close, which is just about as successful as you would imagine seeing they’re visiting his grandparents together. They’re sharing a bed, for god’s sake. The only upside is that Luke doesn’t notice, so he doesn’t ask about his weird behaviour. Or at least, he doesn’t _think_ Luke notices until they’re at the lake on their third evening when most other people are gone. They’re messing around in the water, and Reggie has _just_ begun to let his guard down. That’s the moment Luke dunks him, and Reggie pulls him with him. When they come back up, they’re chest to chest, nose to nose, legs bumping under the surface, and Reggie almost chokes on the shock of being so close, so suddenly. No such effect seems to take Luke hostage; he only grins and winks and leaves him there to make sense of it while he gets out of the water to dry off. Reggie tries not to watch him too obviously as he scrambles to follow, but the water on his skin glistens in the pale light of dusk like in a fucking movie, or something. _God_ , why does he have to be so hot? Reggie has started to catch up on muscle, but Luke has _definition._ He doesn’t need to flex for the shapes to shine through his skin.

Luke acts like nothing happened, so Reggie tells himself he imagined it all and puts his clothes back on. He doesn’t notice Luke watching him get dressed just as interestedly.

Things like the night at the lake keep happening in the days after, and Reggie keeps convincing himself it’s his own stupid wishful thinking, his imagination on overdrive from the long exposure to his stupidly gorgeous best friend. To make it worse, his grandmother keeps giving him cryptic looks and making vague comments in rare moments alone with him, and it’s making him paranoid. She can’t _know_ , can she? She’s too religious to be so casually okay with it. So, to say the least, Reggie is on edge. He’s constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop. Does Luke know he’s into him and is mocking him from afar? Does Frankie know and is waiting for a good moment to take him to an exorcist? Is Alex safe at bible camp or being brainwashed in conversion therapy? Is Bobby – actually, Bobby as usual is the only one he doesn’t have to worry about. Last Reggie heard, he’s been going out with some girl from their class and picking up extra shifts at the music store he works at to get a new amp. Even so, he’s on a tightrope, constantly at risk of falling.

Then, one night on the front porch, Luke interrupts his own playing mid-song (he brought the old western, of course, not the electric guitar he got for the band, and though Luke always insists the electric is cooler, this one always feels like coming back to somewhere warm and comfortable) and asks, “How’d you get that bruise?” They have been sitting there for an hour, and in the entire time, neither has said anything. It feels rather out of the blue.

“What?” Reggie asks, ripped from his own train wreck of a thought process.

“The bruise on your stomach. It’s almost faded, but it looks pretty big. I saw it at the lake, the other night, when you got out of the water.”

“Oh, that,” Reggie says, offhandedly. He completely forgot about that one, with everything else his mind has been occupied with. It’s a pale yellow by now, and it stopped hurting before they even left for Georgia. “It’s nothing, I just fell.”

Luke can tell that he’s lying. Reggie prides himself in being a relatively good liar, but he guesses this one was really a little weak. “Why don’t you have any other bruises, then?”

“They’re… already gone. That one was the biggest, so it stayed the longest.” That much is true. The one on his stomach definitely wasn’t the only bruise that came out of that particular evening. He doesn’t want to think about it too much because when he does, the screaming comes back, echoing through his head, and the tears on his face, and the struggle to breathe, like something was hitting him in the stomach all over again.

“Is that why you wouldn’t take off your flannel the week before we left?”

“Uh…”

“Reg, you know you can tell me if they…” Luke trails off but watches closely as Reggie swallows. He can feel his heart racing in his chest. He really doesn’t want to talk about this, but he also doesn’t want Luke to worry about him. He has to say _something_.

“It’s not like that,” he says, trying to keep his voice calm and his eyes dry. He hasn’t told anyone, hasn’t spoken a word about this out loud. Of course, he hasn’t. “It was just a shove, it’s – it was a one-time thing. Promise. It hasn’t happened before, and it won’t happen again.”

Luke doesn’t look convinced, but he nods and sets his guitar aside to put his arm around Reggie instead. “Okay,” he says into his hair. Reggie is still a little taller, if not by much, but when he rests his head on Luke’s shoulder like now, Luke can comfortably press his lips to the top of Reggie’s head. It’s intimate and so _them_ that Reggie really relaxes for the first time since they left L.A.. “But if it should happen again, you tell me, alright?”

Reggie knows he has no choice but to nod, and for now, he actually believes himself.

For a few days after that, everything almost feels normal again. At least, Reggie doesn’t feel like he’s walking on eggshells anymore. Instead, he enjoys the time with his grandparents and annoys the hell out of Luke by stealing his guitar and playing one country song after the other. He’s even written one for his grandma that he shows her, which promptly turns into a small-scale Sunset Curve concert featuring Luke’s guitar and Reggie on Sam’s former spare because he doesn’t have his bass with him. They show them a couple of Luke’s songs and something they’ve all been working on together, and it’s refreshing to have someone except themselves actually caring about their music for once. (To be fair, the acoustic set-up probably helps their case.) The normalcy holds until Friday of their second week when Luke and Reggie do the dishes after dinner.

While Luke is washing, Reggie is drying and rambling about something relating to something that somehow relates to something Luke said half an hour ago. He’s so lost in it that he doesn’t notice when Luke finishes as Reggie is putting away a plate and comes up behind him. When he turns around, he’s trapped between the counter and Luke’s arms.

“Uh – did you need something?” he asks, ignoring the speed at which blood is rushing up to his cheeks. God, this isn’t good. Luke is looking at him with something in his eyes Reggie can’t determine; all he knows is that it’s making him burn all over. He wants to hide somewhere so Luke can’t see him anymore, but he’s frustratingly stuck.

Luke licks his lips, like he’s a snake about to murder a rat. It’s something Reggie has seen on documentaries before, and he can’t say it looks like an experience he would enjoy. Weirdly, he’s enjoying _this_ quite a lot. Luke takes a little step closer, then another, and then they’re pressed against each other chest to chest, and Luke just has to feel the way his heart is beating against his ribcage.

“I _need_ you to promise you’ll stop me if I do anything you don’t want me to,” Luke half-whispers, and Reggie can taste the words on his half-open lips. He’s too stunned for another coherent sentence, too stunned to even fully understand what Luke is saying. In his helpless state, he just nods vigorously, and before he can even think about what on earth is going on, Luke has closed the gap between them and is kissing him. It’s much gentler than the surprise attack and the hungry look on his face would have suggested, and it’s all the more breath-taking for it. It’s a little messy at first, of course, with noses in the way and the pacing off, but they get into it after a minute, and then Reggie slowly starts pushing, putting his hand to the back of Luke’s neck and deepening the kiss. It’s over quicker than he’d like, still, and then they’re both pulling back, out of breath but grinning.

“You just – I – we –,“ Reggie stutters, and it comes out half-laughing so that he probably sounds like he has completely lost his mind. Luke grins even wider and presses another quick kiss against his mouth.

“Yeah.”

It happens everywhere, after that. Whenever they’re alone for a moment, Luke will drag him into a corner to kiss the living daylights out of him, or he’ll take his hand or pull him into a hug that lasts a little longer than hugs used to. They’ve always shared the big bed in the guest room, but now they fall asleep pressed together and wake up entangled in limbs and sheets. Nights on the porch now contain less stargazing and more making out. Sometimes, Reggie just lies on top of Luke in the dark of night and listens to his heartbeat and the crickets in the grass until hours later, Luke wakes him up to go upstairs to bed.

He doesn’t know what sparked this, doesn’t know what made Luke kiss him that first time or any of the times after that, and it feels a little too good to be true. It also feels like everything he ever dreamed what being in love would feel like, so he refuses to let his insecurities ruin it for him. They sneak around the house, getting more and more daring, even though Reggie keeps reminding Luke that they really, really can’t be seen. On one occasion, they make out in the woods for two hours until they’re startled by a deer, and Reggie almost has a heart attack thinking someone caught them. Everyone here knows everyone, and if someone sees them, Reggie is fully aware that his grandparents will be informed within the hour. Still, when Luke offers, he never once refuses.

With this, and with afternoons spent with Frankie and Sam, and with trips into town and long phone calls with Alex and Bobby, the summer passes way too quickly. They have three weeks left when Reggie presses Luke up against the back of the house and leaves hickeys on his chest and his shoulder and his collarbone, and they get into a rather ridiculous story about leeches from the lake being responsible for the dark spots when Sam asks about it. Two weeks when Luke’s hand finds its way down the front Reggie’s pants at night, and Reggie presses his back up against Luke’s chest, panting and reaching back to touch any part of Luke he can get while Luke is nibbling on his neck. Nine days when they’re looking for a punchbowl in the basement, and he goes down on Luke for the first time between shelves stacked with preserving jars, clumsy but eager. Luke kisses him after, and Reggie swears his heart has never beaten faster.

The thing is, they don’t actually _talk_ about it. They keep doing, going further, going all the way. They talk about everything, like they always have, but they don’t talk about what this is that Reggie can feel growing between them and that translates into kisses and warm hands running along smooth skin. He’s never actually been with anyone until now, girl or boy, aside from a few awkward dates with girls from school that never went anywhere. Reggie doesn’t know how or if to address this. He could just tell him how he feels, the same infernal words that have been weighing on his tongue for months, but that feels reckless and stupid, even for his standards. So, he doesn’t address it. Not until Luke addresses it, he says to himself, and Luke never addresses it.

Then they drive home. They hold hands on the bus, hidden between them from the eyes of other passengers, and they talk like usual, passing smiles, but he can feel the tension growing. They both want to know that they’re on the same page but have no clue what page the other is on. Reggie feels like he’s in class. He’s about to get called on for the homework just to find out he gave the wrong answer.

Alex is waiting for them at the station, and when they see him through the window of the bus, both of them let go of the other instantly. Reggie looks at Luke and sees something strange, something distant. He wants to frown, wants to ask, but he doesn’t. Instead, he follows Luke off the bus and into Alex’ arms.

“So, what did I miss?” Alex asks.

Without looking at Reggie, Luke smiles and says, “Nothing. Same old.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> what can I say... oops?


	5. Summer 1995

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... the last chapter   
> get ready (I'm not)
> 
> as always, i'd love to hear your thoughts! and thanks again to everyone who read this, left kudos, and commented on it because I always grin at my phone when I get a comment email!!

The next year is torture for Reggie, not because it’s awkward, but because everything is exactly the same as it used to be with the sad exception of his broken heart. He doesn’t tell Alex about what happened in Georgia. Luke obviously doesn’t want him to know, and it’s over, anyway, and Reggie doesn’t want Alex to get mad at Luke like he inevitably will for something that isn’t really Luke’s fault. There’s no reason to put any additional weight on the friendship or on the band. Reggie never _asked_ what was going on between them, so he has no right to be upset just because he assumed it was something it was not.

So, everything is _exactly the same as it used to be_ , except Reggie keeps his smile up at all times, no matter how rotten he feels on the inside. He never used to be one to complain much to his friends in the first place, but now he keeps it all in. It’s _exactly the same_ , except his parents get worse, and the band gets better, and then Luke runs away from home just before, and Reggie’s heart breaks all over again at the tears on his face when he falls into his arms one night after practice to tell him about it. That day he decides that he needs to get over this already, that he needs to be there for Luke and finally put all his stupid feelings aside, so he can stop secretly wallowing over it and resenting Luke for something he can’t help. For a while, he kind of wished it were awkward for both of them, wished for Luke to stop acting like _nothing_ changed between them because that’s exactly what’s making it worse, but he knows that’s a stupid wish. He’s having a lot of stupid thoughts, lately.

Except, he doesn’t actually follow through with his resolution. He doesn’t stop wallowing. He just shoves the wallowing down even further than he already did and stops avoiding Luke like he tried to for a while. It didn’t really work, anyway. It hurts to be around Luke, but it hurts even worse to be away from him.

He throws himself into practice and helps Luke writing songs, and he hangs out with the guys at the beach when they’re not preparing for the gigs that keep coming more and more often. In April, they record a demo and start planning a month-long tour for the summer, mainly so that Alex’ parents can’t _actually_ send him to conversion therapy this year. In early June, they get a call from the Orpheum, offering them a showcase. It’s right at the beginning of summer break and three weeks before they leave for the tour. When he sees it all written out on his calendar, Reggie takes some money from his last job and buys a bus ticket to Georgia for the day after the Orpheum gig. He doesn’t ask Luke to come, and Luke doesn’t offer, and finally, as the gig and the day of his leaving approach, all his tension is starting to rise back up in his throat. Part of him is begging to ask Luke to come, and an even bigger part is begging for Luke to want to. At least, the tension lets Reggie know that Luke hasn’t forgotten what happened last year, that he isn’t indifferent to it. If he were, he’d have his ticket long ready. It’s worse because now it feels so much more like he regrets it.

The morning before the Orpheum, he and Alex walk to their final rehearsal together. Alex has been giving him concerned looks all week, and so when he asks, Reggie finally bursts and tells him everything. Every last fucking thing. He tells him how Luke kissed him that day in the kitchen, and how it kept happening, and how they _slept together_ – God, Reggie can’t believe he had his first time with his best friend, and _this_ is what came of it. He has a hard time not crying, especially when Alex pulls him into a hug at a street corner. Alex has gotten careful with public displays of affection lately, but he throws caution in the wind just to comfort him.

“I’m going to murder him,” he whispers into Reggie’s hair, which rips a dry sob from his chest because it reminds him of the dozens of times Luke has done the same thing. “I’m going to rip his throat out.”

“It’s not his fault,” Reggie mumbles into Alex’ sweatshirt before slowly pulling away with an embarrassed smile. “He didn’t know I was in love with him. He still doesn’t, by the way, so I’d appreciate if you didn’t give him death glares that he isn’t going to understand.”

“I still think he shouldn’t – whatever. What are you going to do?”

“Nothing. I’m going to Georgia alone, the day after tomorrow. I’ll come back, and we’ll go on tour. Same old,” he says, but the smile tastes bitter on his lips as he echoes Luke’s words from a year ago. “They’re my grandparents, I can get through two weeks with them without Luke there. They’re much more pleasant to be around than my parents, in any case.”

“I mean, yeah,” Alex says, hands in his pockets. “But are you sure… you two always used to go together.”

“What do you want me to do? Ask him to come along?”

“No,” Alex huffs. He would probably punch Reggie if he knew how many times he has been this close to actually doing just that. “Of course not. Just… stay here. We can hang out every day, you won’t even remember your parents. We don’t even have to tell Luke, I’ll just tell him I’m sick, or something.”

Reggie actually laughs at that. “That’s sweet, dude, but you know Luke would probably break in through your window and bring you a can of chicken soup, or something. I’ll be fine, I promise. It’s just two weeks.”

Alex gives in and nods, but the look on his face echoes exactly what Reggie is thinking. Just two weeks, in a house full of bittersweet memories.

He’s scared shitless, to say the least.

Somehow, he makes it to Georgia without crying on the bus. There are a few close calls, like when they drive past a landmark Luke always used to make the same stupid joke about when they passed it before, but he manages to swallow past the lump in his throat and get back into the book he’s reading. It’s from school, and they’ve already written the test on it, but he hopes that if he reads it again, he’ll finally get what the hell it’s even about. He has been struggling more, lately, never wanting to ask the others for help, but he really wants to make it through senior year. If he doesn’t graduate, it will probably give his parents the final push. He can already see the fight they’re going to have, trying to figure out who’s to blame for the way he turned out, even if he still hopes to find some more permanent way out of there before it all boils over. He even asked his teacher for the reading list for next year, so he can get ahead in English and spend more time focussing on trig and chemistry once the semester starts.

They have dinner once he arrives, having insisted he can take public transport to get there, and they don’t have to drive to Atlanta again to pick him up. Luke’s absence hangs over the table in an unspoken question, but he ignores it and asks them what he’s missed since he last saw them at Christmas. It’s not a lot, seeing they’re both long retired and don’t do much outside of their everyday routine. They return the question, and he tells them about the band, the Orpheum, the tour.

“That’s amazing, sweetheart,” Frankie smiles, forcing more mashed potatoes upon him even though he feels like he might explode if he eats any more. Something warm settles in him at her proud expression and the grin Sam gives him. Satisfied parental figures are something that he and his friends all have been lacking, lately. He feels bad for a moment for depriving Luke of that feeling, knowing that he has just as much a relationship with them at this point as Reggie does, but it isn’t like he told Luke not to come. He’s never invited Luke, before. Luke has always been the one to offer. This, even if everything else about their situation is, is not Reggie’s fault. He smiles back at his grandparents and nods. It _is_ amazing. It feels good to know at least someone supports them.

He mostly spends the next days in the garden with his grandmother, reading together, talking, or just listening to country music on the radio. Frankie is the only one who _will_ listen to country with him, and while he really doesn’t care that his friends still mock him for his banjo and his cheesy lyrics, it’s nice to have someone who enjoys it as much as he does. It never occurred to him that maybe he likes country so much _because_ it connects him to this place and to his grandma, but it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that it always makes him feel a little more at ease. He doesn’t bring out the guitar, this year, though.

It’s only a matter of time, of course, until someone finally addresses the elephant in the room, but it still catches Reggie off guard when Sam speaks up at breakfast one morning.

“So, did you two break up, then?” he asks, and Reggie is so frozen in shock that a piece of egg falls out of his mouth. When he remembers how to chew and swallow, he still doesn’t know what to say. Frankie chuckles lightly, hands him a napkin, and puts a hand over his on the table.

“Reginald, you didn’t really think we didn’t notice you two sneaking around the house all that time, did you?”

“I- I- I-“ Reggie starts, feeling cornered. They know, God, what are they going to do? What is _he_ going to do? “I – I kinda did think that.”

“You kids weren’t exactly subtle,” Sam says.

“But – you never said anything, I – did you tell mom and dad?” He doesn’t think they did. His father probably already would have kicked him out. Or kicked him, at least.

“No, and we won’t,” his grandmother says, calmly. He looks at her like she’s grown a second head. _Why not?_ he wants to ask. She seems to know. “You seem to forget we’re your mother’s parents. We don’t have to tell her anything.”

“But – and you’re not – aren’t you angry?” That’s what it boils down to, anyway. His grandparents have been going to church once a week all their lives, they pray before bed and say grace before each meal – the only other people he knows that practice religion so intensely are Alex’ parents. It doesn’t bode well.

“Of course not, sweetheart,” Frankie says. “You’re such a sweet, smart boy.” He has an outrageous urge to laugh at that, but she’s his grandmother, so he figures she has to say that. “You always want the people you love to be happy, and you love so much. I’ve seen it. What could be wrong with that?” Again, Reggie doesn’t know what to say. She pats his hand before getting up to start clearing the table. Like on autopilot, he follows to help her while Sam starts packing up leftovers. “There’s nothing more Christian than to love, Reginald. It doesn’t matter who it is you give your heart to.”

He calls Alex later that day, when his grandparents are both out in the backyard, and tells him about it. “I was so scared when they said they knew, but… they reacted so well, Alex. I wish you were here. You should have heard them.”

“That’s great, Reg,” Alex says, and he sounds like he’s smiling. He didn’t want to tell Alex at first, worried he might get upset when reminded of how bad things are with his own family, but he should have known Alex would be happy for him. Alex is too good for any of them, anyway. “How’s things?”

“It’s… okay,” Reggie decides, although his skin is itching with the lie. He feels brave, so he says, “I miss him, Lex. It’s like he’s everywhere in this house. I can’t even look at the stars without thinking about him or listen to the records we danced to that one year or go swimming in the lake – and there isn’t that much else to do, here!”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. It would be worse if he was actually here, probably. God, none of this makes any sense.”

“Love will do that to you,” Alex sighs, but he sounds a little too amused for Reggie’s taste. He’d like some pity, thank you very much. He might be states away, but he’s still heartbroken. “It’ll be okay, though. Luke might be a dick, but he always comes through once he actually notices how fucking stupid he is.”

“Yeah, here’s to hoping he _never_ realises what’s going on here, though,” Reggie says, rubbing a hand over his face. “Anyway, what about you? How are you doing?”

Alex’ words haunt him through the next day like a ghost in an old mansion, and he’s slowly getting paranoid. Did Alex say something to Luke, and this was his warning for the apocalypse Reggie will inevitably come back to? Did Luke realise all on his own? If Luke knew how Reggie feels, wouldn’t he have called already to ask him about it? Or is he mad, or disgusted, or whatever, and doesn’t want to talk to him anymore? Maybe he’ll kick him out of the band. He doesn’t know what he’d do, then. The band is pretty much all he can rely on in all of California. Maybe he hates him now because he took advantage of him when Luke only wanted to blow off steam, or experiment, or whatever the hell that last summer was to him. (Okay, so maybe Reggie is spiralling. Again, there’s not much else to do, here!)

His grandpa takes him to town to run some errands, trying to distract him, but even here, he sees Luke in everything. Every memory he has in the entire _state_ is linked to Luke. It’s impossible to get away from. He talks with Sam animatedly, but his mind is only ever half-way there.

One night, he feels like inflicting pain upon himself and sneaks out to walk all the way out to the lake, where he lies in the grass and watches the stars until he’s freezing cold. He spends most of that time crying silently, but there’s nobody else to see him, so he allows himself. A few nights later, half-time for his short trip, he walks out onto the front porch on wobbly legs with a cup of water and a blanket. It’s past eleven, and the village is wrapped in complete silence, save the low sounds of nature. There are a few clouds in the sky, lit by the moon, but they’re not enough to hide all the stars that shine through the gaps. He wraps the blanket tighter around himself even though it isn’t very cold, yet, and stares up at the sky. He’s read through the book from last year, and he’s halfway into the first one for next term, but he remains worried. Without the additional pressure of school and parental expectations, he seems more or less able to focus and understand what he’s reading, but he might still be getting everything wrong without even noticing it. Plus, there are so many things from last year he still doesn’t get, classes he’s so behind on he doesn’t know how he’ll ever understand anything his teachers will be trying to convey come September. Then there are his parents, who are screaming so much that he doesn’t know how they still have functioning vocal cords. He hasn’t seen his father sober in months. He hasn’t been without bruises for as long. He’s constantly worried about Alex and his parents, and what will happen if they decide to kick him out or take him away, or if they manage to convince him that there really is something wrong with him. And then, there’s –

He’s pulled from his thoughts after a long while of sitting out there by a distant sound coming closer, and the faint light of headlights turning brighter. It isn’t like it’s forbidden to drive in the middle of the night, but Reggie is pretty sure he’s never seen a car around here past ten in the evening. He doesn’t see much, given the headlights are the only unnatural source of light, but then the vehicle comes to a stop by the street next to the driveway and the lights turn off. With only the moonlight left, Reggie recognises it as their tour van. His heart stops. Bobby has no reason to come here, and Alex isn’t spontaneous enough to turn up at a stranger’s house in the middle of the night. There’s only one other person who has access to that car.

Reggie feels the urge to run back into the house and act like he’s asleep, but he knows that even if he could do that fast enough before Luke sees him, Luke wouldn’t hesitate to ring everyone out of their beds with the doorbell until he got what he came for. Here we go, Reggie thinks. Now he’s going to beat you to a pulp. (Does he actually believe that? He isn’t sure. He’s feeling a bit… unstable.)

Luke closes the car door quietly and effortlessly steps over the little gate in the fence instead of opening it, avoiding potential creaking noises. For a second after he sees Reggie there, he looks a little shocked, stops in his tracks, but then continues. Reggie is fidgeting by the time Luke sits next to him right where he always used to sit.

“What are you doing here?” he asks, trying to sound casual about it. Like when they would run into each other at the studio some nights, back before Luke made it his permanent residence, instead of here, over two thousand miles away.

“I kind of felt like I should have been here all along.” Reggie looks over at him, wondering what on earth that means. Maybe Alex _didn’t_ say anything, and Luke just feels bad for leaving him to come here alone. “Sorry I didn’t…”

“It’s okay,” Reggie says. They’re mostly muscle memory, by now, those words. “I know why you –“

“No, Reg, you don’t,” Luke interrupts, and, well, now Reggie really is confused. “I talked to Alex.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

“No, don’t – He said you think that I – and _I_ thought – fuck. I should have written this down or something.”

“You’re not being very eloquent for a song-writer,” Reggie jokes, but his hands are still fidgeting, and he’s still all hunched up, and it must be altogether obvious that he’s using every ounce of self-control not to run. He has no idea what’s going on, but if Luke’s talk with Alex was enough to send him driving all the way to Georgia, it must be bad.

“I’m blaming you for that.”

“Sorry,” Reggie says, again. Luke makes a frustrated noise, and it only makes his urge to hide stronger.

“ _No_ , I meant – shit, Reggie, can you please just look at me?” he asks, voice desperate. His hand reaches for Reggie’s to make his stop fidgeting, but Reggie pulls away and sits on it instead. Still, he does raise his head and look at Luke. He looks like he has no idea what he’s doing, and Reggie’s glad he’s at least not the only one. “I’m not … angry with you, or anything.”

“Disappointed, then.”

“No, listen… okay, no. Let’s start with last year.”

“I really don’t want to talk about this, right now.”

“I do,” Luke says. “What was that to you, last year?”

“Luke, _please_ ,” Reggie says, and he knows he sounds desperate and hurt, but he _really_ can’t talk about this with Luke.

“I ask because we’d never talked about that, or who we wanted to know, and then suddenly we were home, and everything was like nothing had happened, and I thought maybe I got it all wrong.”

“Wait, what?”

“I thought it was just a Georgia thing, to you. It’s not like you ever – I mean, I started it all, so who knew you even wanted this?”

“Are you –“ A few things are dawning on Reggie at that moment, and some of them are making _him_ a little angry, now. “But you got off the bus and you… you _looked_ at me like that and you – when Alex asked, you said –“

“ _Same old_. Yeah, I know, and that was awful. I’m sorry, Reg, but I just realised that well, nothing much had changed. I was still stupidly in love with you, and I still had no idea if you felt the same. I should have talked to you, I should have known you’d think… something bad, even before that, but I was terrified and stupid. And you know me, I never really think too much about what I’m saying and how it goes over until Alex hits me for it.”

“I told him not to do that,” Reggie mumbled, probably bright red in the face.

“Thanks,” Luke says, nudging him with a soft smile. The heat radiating off his body has Reggie yearning to come closer. “I kind of deserved it, though.”

“Well, at least he didn’t rip your throat out.” Luke laughs, and Reggie stops sitting on his hands to grab one of Luke’s and run a thumb along the back. “I’m sorry, too. I could have asked, or said something, or… anyway, I shouldn’t have just assumed the worst.”

“It’s more Alex’ thing, anyway,” Luke says, smiling down at their joint hands. When he looks back up, Reggie tentatively smiles back.

“We’re really not too good at the whole communication thing,” he notes. “I can’t believe we wasted a year just like that.”

“Yeah, Alex is never letting us live this down.”

“Did he know?” Reggie asks. “I mean, that you – because it didn’t sound like it when I left.”

Luke shakes his head, and Reggie releases a breath. He doesn’t know why he was afraid. If Alex had known, he surely wouldn’t have let them both suffer for so long. “I got a bit mean after you left, so I think he figured it out, then. He asked me about it, and I told him about what happened back then, and then he told me I’m a big, stupid asshole and that you thought I’d… well, you know. And then he pestered me what I was going to do about it for two days before I got into the car and left.”

“I’ve missed this,” Reggie slowly says in place of an answer. He doesn’t really know what else to say to any of this, but the happy grin is now wide on his face, and more than anything, he just wants a hug. He _has_ missed this. He’s missed not having to hide everything from Luke, not being afraid of him even when everything seemed normal on the surface.

“I’m sorry,” Luke says again, pressing a kiss to the back of Reggie’s hand. It tingles on his skin, and it makes him blush even more than before.

“No, it’s okay. It’s really my fault. I feel like I’ve been keeping everyone at an arm’s length for _ever_.”

“Well, we can fix that,” Luke grins, wrapping his arms around Reggie and pulling him tightly against his chest. As if the past year didn’t happen at all, he presses his lips to Reggie’s hair and squeezes him tightly. “Here. Not even a finger’s length away, now.” Reggie hums, but he’s still red and tense in Luke’s arms, so Luke lets loose a little. “Is this… not okay?”

“Yeah, no, it is,” Reggie mumbles against his chest. “Very okay. I just need to get used to this, I guess. I did spend a year thinking I couldn’t ever have this again, so…”

“Alright,” Luke nods. “I get that. Do you want me to let go?” Reggie shakes his head vigorously, and his hair goes with the movement. It makes Luke laugh a little under his breath because it looks so cute. “Are you sure? I had a whole car ride to think about this, but I guess I kind of ambushed you a bit just now.”

Reggie shakes his head again, and Luke almost thinks he’s not going to get any more of an answer when he says, “I’m sure,” and snuggles even closer.

“I brought you something,” Luke whispers after a while, and only then does Reggie pull back a little and take note of the ratty old backpack Luke discarded next to them earlier. He reaches for it and fights with the zipper before finally pulling out a misshapen little stuffed giraffe. Reggie gasps, quietly, taking the plushie and hugging it close to his chest.

“How – did you break into my house?”

“Well, I thought maybe David would like his old position as best friend back if you’d… you know. Consider letting me be your boyfriend, instead?” By the time he finishes the sentence, Luke’s cheeks are burning hot, and he’s fiddling with his hands. “Only if or when you’re ready, obviously. No… no rush, or anything.”

Reggie just nods wholeheartedly, eyes gleaming even in the darkness, and lets himself fall right back against Luke’s chest, like’s he’s never belonged anywhere else. He can hear Luke’s heartbeat, there, quick but still calming, somehow. “Yeah,” he says. “I’d like that.”

They don’t talk a lot, after that, and at some point, Luke drags a half-asleep Reggie up the stairs and into the bed they’ve shared so many times. Reggie pulls him down with him before he can even think about whether he should better sleep on the floor tonight, just to give him some space, and they fall asleep within minutes, all wrapped up in each other.

In the morning, when the two come downstairs for breakfast, Reggie’s grandparents have already seen the van (which, of course, has _Sunset Curve_ spray-painted on the side in large letters, so it’s rather obvious who would have put it there) and drawn their conclusions, so they don’t look too surprised at the extra guest. Still, Sam gives Luke a sharp look over his morning coffee, which causes Luke to swallow and Reggie to chuckle, a little embarrassed.

“Morning,” he says, getting another set of dishes for Luke.

“Morning,” Luke mumbles.

“Sit down, you two,” Frankie says, watching the whole scene with amusement.

“I like you, kid.” Sam is not looking at Luke anymore now, instead spreading butter over a slice of bread. At least he doesn’t beat around the bush, Reggie thinks, although he really never thought someone would ever give a shovel talk on his behalf. Except for Alex, maybe. “But if you ever make my grandson look like he did when he got off that bus again, I have a nice pear tree to bury you under. Got it?”

“Grandpa!”

“What? The dog’s buried under the cherry tree, but the pear tree is surely just as nice,” he says, but he’s grinning, and that finally releases some of the tension from Luke’s shoulders. “It’s good to have you back.”

“It’s good to be back.”

They spend the day at the lake again, even though Reggie is hesitant to take his shirt off at first. He remembers the promise he made a year ago, that he’d come to Luke, and he can’t count how many times he’s broken it since. Most of it is faded by now, but he has a bruise or two and a stray scar somewhere or other that he has no good explanation for. Ultimately, he knows that Luke will find out at some point, and that he won’t be mad at him for not telling him, even if his silly mind wants to convince him otherwise. He doesn’t have to hide anymore, he reminds himself, but he still doesn’t warn Luke in hopes that maybe, miraculously, he just won’t notice. ( _Hah_. Right.)

He does notice, of course. He turns towards him, in the middle of talking about a list of things they have to get done before they leave for their tour and stops halfway through a sentence. Reggie honestly doesn’t think he looks _that_ bad, but he guesses it might have to do with the fact that Luke hasn’t seen him topless in a year, and last time it really had just started.

“I –“ he begins, hoping to somehow make this look less awful, but Luke is already over with him and wrapping him in a hug.

“I’m sorry,” Luke says, and Reggie is starting to think maybe he doesn’t know any other words anymore with how many times he’s said it now. Blushing, he pulls away a little. They’re still in public, after all, and two guys hugging while shirtless in some small town in Georgia might not go over too well.

“Don’t be,” Reggie says. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I should have checked in with you. I could _tell_ things were getting worse, but I told myself it was just because I was feeling awkward and hurt and shit.”

“It’s okay.” Reggie really would like to go back into the hug thing, but there’s just too many other people around. Luke looks helpless and guilty, his hands buried in the pockets of his shorts. Desperately, Reggie searches for a way to lighten the mood. “We’re here, now, and we’re going to be gone all summer. I won’t even think about thinking about them.”

“But –“

“Nope! Race you to the water,” Reggie interrupts him before this can go any further, and the surprise gets him a good couple of seconds of a head start. He’s already hip-deep in when Luke sets the first foot into the lake, and he laughs when Luke catches up and glares at him.

“You cheated,” he complains, getting closer, and then he wraps his arms around Reggie again and drags them both underwater. Reggie squeals ridiculously and splutters when they come back up at a point where the water reaches their necks. They’re both grinning, though, and Luke still has his hands on him underwater, where nobody can see. It feels thrilling, being so close after so long, and Reggie can’t wait until they’re somewhere else, so he can learn how to kiss Luke dizzy all over again. He wonders if he’s still as sensitive in that spot below his ear.

The sunlight breaks through water droplets in Luke’s hair, and his smile shines all the way to his eyes, and Reggie is so in love he could throw up and would still have a lifetime worth of it left. He wants to kiss Luke so badly that he hurts with it, but he can’t, so he lets his emotions spill out in words instead.

“You’re beautiful,” he blurts, still grinning ear to ear, and he delights in the way it makes Luke flush and tug at his waist.

“You’re a dork,” Luke replies in a fond tone.

“I love you.” It’s enough to make Luke even redder and his smile even fonder, and if he ever stops looking at Reggie like that, he will probably die. Luke pulls him a little closer until they’re just a few inches apart and leans in before he speaks. The proximity washes over Reggie in a flash of heat, and he faintly wonders if it could give him sunburn.

“I would very much like to kiss you right now if that’s okay.”

“But – but the people!” he gets out, somehow, despite Luke’s hand ghosting over his stomach.

“Who are they going to tell? Your grandparents?” They’re almost nose to nose now, and if anyone is watching them, they probably already have an idea what is going on, here. Still, for some reason, Reggie feels the need to argue. (He hates his brain, sometimes. It’s not like he doesn’t want to kiss Luke. He _really_ does. So much. Jesus.)

“They could still beat us up, or something,” he points out. Luke runs his eyes over his face, followed swiftly by his thumb. He looks thoughtful, but not at all worried. Leave it to Luke to be all confident about it, really.

“Let them try to even touch you,” he finally murmurs against Reggie’s lips, and the protectiveness pulls at his stomach like it’s actively dragging him forward into Luke’s arms. It’s no use, really. It wasn’t any use from the beginning, trying to resist this, so Reggie closes the distance between their lips for the first time in a year, heart beating against his throat. Luke hugs his arms around him fully until there is no air or water left separating them, and Reggie places one hand on his neck and one on his upper arm just to keep steady. With the knowledge that this is real, this time, it feels even more amazing than it did before, and at some point, Reggie has to pull back a little because he can’t stop grinning. Luke is in a similar state, so it’s okay. They stay in their embrace, catching their breath. When Reggie throws a nervous look around them, nobody is even looking in their direction, and so he presses another quick peck against his lips.

“You’re a dork,” Luke repeats, but the expression on his face says something else.

“Am not,” Reggie argues.

“Are, too.”

“D2!”

“God, I love you,” Luke laughs, squeezing his arms around him.

“I know.” It earns him a pout, childish, and adorable, and kissable, so he kisses him _again_ , daredevil that he is, and adds, “I love you, too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is it! I hope I met your expectations ;) I was originally going to stop after the scene on the porch, but it felt a little like too many loose strings, sooooo


End file.
